NANKING-01/B/19JULY98/SC/TK=Iris Chang, author of "Rape of Nanking", at the exhibit on Treasure Island. photo by Tim Kao/the chronicle. ALSO RAN: 09/16/2001 Ran on: 11-20-2004
In a 1937 photo, Japanese officers in the background are seen smiling during the slaying of a Chinese man. Ran on: 11-20-2004
In a 1937 photo, Japanese officers in the background are seen smiling during the slaying of a Chinese man.

Photo: TIM KAO

NANKING-01/B/19JULY98/SC/TK=Iris Chang, author of "Rape of...

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Chang20 In Nanking the Japanese turned murder into sport. Note the smiles on the Japanese in the background. (Revolutionary Documents, Taipei/Penguin Books Datebook#Datebook#Chronicle#11/20/2004#ALL#Advance##0422474067

Chang20 In Nanking the Japanese turned murder into sport. Note the...

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Professor Sun Zhaiwei, here showing Jiangsu Province official Jiang Jiangming photos of he and Iris Chang, helped Chang with research in Nanjing and recalls being impressed with her intelligence and passion for her work. Sun says Chang added immensely to the overall body of historical work about the Nanjing Massacre.

2004-11-20 04:00:00 PDT Nanjing, China -- When Iris Chang arrived here in the sweltering summer of 1995, locals were at once surprised and bemused that the sweet, ponytailed, young American planned to take on the darkest period in the city's modern history --

the 1937 wartime massacre when Japanese invaders killed some 300,000 people and raped, burned and pillaged the Chinese capital, then called Nanking, into ruins.

When she left a month later, historians, friends and colleagues were so impressed with her single-minded focus, they harbored little doubt the 27-year- old Bay Area writer would focus a global spotlight on what Chinese call the "Great Nanjing Massacre." They were right. When Chang's book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," was published in 1997, it became an instant best-seller, generated international attention and reignited debate over Japan's responsibility for war crimes.

Chang, who lived in San Jose, shot herself to death Nov. 9 in her car, parked along a rural road south of Los Gatos. The news hit Nanjing fast and hard. This bustling city of 6 million glimmers with modern construction and growing wealth, but scars from the Japanese occupation linger barely beneath the surface. Many wonder if the gentle, sympathetic young woman, known here as Chang Shunru, was the massacre's latest victim.

"It all had such a huge impact on her mind," recalls Duan Yueping, then assistant curator of the Memorial Hall of the Nanking Massacre Victims, who worked every day with Chang, guiding her to massacre sites and through stacks of documents and photos.

Duan, a tough middle-aged woman who studied the Nanjing atrocities for years and considers herself a seasoned pro, still has nightmares from the stories she's heard and photos she's seen. Chang, she says, worked incessantly in Nanjing interviewing survivors, immersed in graphic pictures and documents, all the while agonizing over why the story was not widely known outside China. By the time she left Nanjing, Duan says, Chang was physically weak but even more committed to telling the story.

"The subject matter had to affect her. Perhaps she could not bear it," Duan says, her eyes filling with tears as she pulls out a picture of herself and Chang at a dinner in Nanjing.

"We just can't understand why such a great young writer and lovely person would leave the world so early," Duan says, shaking her head.

In her Nanjing book, Chang wrote: "My greatest hope is that this book will inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of the Nanking survivors before the last of the voices from the past, dwindling in number every year, are extinguished forever."

Two of the city's last living victims do know that Chang's work changed their lives.

Ni Cuiping was 11 years old when Japanese soldiers slaughtered her parents and six other family members, stabbed her repeatedly with a bayonet and left her for dead. There was no money or means for medical treatment during the siege, so she healed slowly and badly. Nearly 70 years later, her left shoulder is mangled from the stab wounds that left her whole arm underdeveloped and useless.

"My body is a witness to the Japanese atrocities," says Ni.

Chang's book -- the first widely published English-language history of the massacre -- brought global attention to the plight of survivors like Ni. Though there were extensive trials after the occupation ended, Japan paid no reparations and international politics kept the massacre under wraps for decades while survivors, many unable to work because of their disabilities and social stigma, languished in poverty. Chang videotaped their stories, wrote them down, and, most importantly, gave them a voice around the world.

"We wanted the whole world to know," says Ni, who visited San Francisco with Chang for a war-crimes conference in 2001.

Iris Chang has faded from the memory of Xia Shuqing. Her mind, especially this time of year, is occupied with other things. Xia was a girl of 7 when Japanese soldiers broke down her door, shot her father to death, raped and killed her mother, then murdered five other family members. She, too, was bayoneted repeatedly and left for dead. It all happened in December of 1937, and when winter approaches, it's difficult for Xia to think of other things.

"I was half-blind, I've cried so many times over these years," says Xia, her eyes welling.

Ni says that, at one time, she would shake with fear trying to speak of the Japanese invasion and the slaughter of her family. Because of the work of Chang and others, she and Xia feel strongly today and speak openly of their horrors. Though they are financially better off and more comfortable from donations and help after Chang's book, both women still want Japan to issue an official apology, something for which Iris Chang fought passionately.

Chang ended her life before she saw any apology; Japan has issued no formal statement regarding her death. Her loss has left another wound in Nanjing and across China. Her death made headlines nationwide, with newspapers referring to her in reverent tones as a modern-day heroine. In Nanjing, the city was abuzz, from taxi drivers to shopkeepers, about what may have led to such a sad ending for the "young warrior," named alongside NBA star Yao Ming as one of the most famous young Chinese today.

Besides giving international attention to a story that has long been a bruise on China's national psyche, Chang added immensely to the overall body of research about the Nanjing Massacre. Historian Sun Zhaiwei, a professor at the Jiangsu (Province) Academy of Social Sciences, was one of the first people to meet Chang in Nanjing. Sun noted that Chang uncovered the historically invaluable 2,000-page diaries of German John Rabe, a Nazi who saved tens of thousands of Chinese from certain slaughter by creating a Nanjing safety zone marshaled by the city's then-few expatriates.

Others can't help but compare Chang's fate with that of another American, Minnie Vautrin, who lived in Nanjing during the Japanese occupation and led a safe house effort that saved thousands of lives and thousands of Chinese women and girls from systematic rape by Japanese soldiers. In her book, Chang wrote how Vautrin returned to the United States and killed herself a year later, exhausted and haunted by the images of those she could not save.

Chang's close friend Ignatius Ding, a retired Cupertino engineer who sponsored some of her early research, said the parallels between Vautrin and Chang are strong. Both were deeply passionate and involved, both took the events to heart and both eventually collapsed under the weight. A Chinese garden in Norfolk, Va., that contains a memorial to Minnie Vautrin plans to add a memorial to Iris Chang, including her as the latest victim of the Nanjing Massacre.

Although Chang's work was dismissed as amateurish by some historians and Japanese scholars, Sun, considered one of China's foremost authorities on the Nanjing Massacre, said Chang's real contributions were invaluable.

"I could not believe it was true when I heard the news," says Sun, clutching a photo of himself and his daughter with Iris Chang in the United States. "I sincerely believe that her contributions to Nanjing and to world peace will always be with us."

In tribute to Chang, the victims' memorial hall in Nanjing held a service at the same time as her funeral in Los Altos on Friday. The stark memorial hall, filled with documents, photos and human remains, will add a wing next year dedicated to Iris Chang.

Memorial hall director Zhu Chengshan said Chang's book brought immense attention to the place, boosting international recognition and funding. The number of visitors each year to the hall, built near one of Nanjing's mass graves, has doubled to 1.2 million people since the book was published.

"We all think she contributed so much. Her spirit will never die, especially in this fight," says Zhu. "Her influence won't die."